“That alone made me want to find every Richelieu in the world and kiss them. With tongue.”

“Traveling all alone,are you?" One of them asked with what could be described only as a leer worthy of any penny dreadful.Blast."Let me pass," I demanded. Where the devil was everyone?"There's a toll,love," he insisted. "Didn't you know?"We were well hidden by the luggage and a shroud of steam,thick as London fog. The third boy looked uncomfortable, as if he wanted to stop his companions but didn't know how. Fat lot of good his squirming would do me."Give us a kiss,then.”

“He kissed me as if we had all the time in the world, as if it weren’t cold outside, as if winter weren’t coming, or the dawn, or any of the dangers that waited for us outside this field. I kissed him back as if he were right, as if there were only the two of us, as if the only worry we had were my curfew.”

“Dearest Reece,I know you think it improper, or at the very least imprudent, for us to write to one another, but I don't care.There are too many rules as it is and they would choke me if I let them. Between corsets and lessons and curtsies and etiquette, I am hardly myself, and that is how they want it. They would prefer we all dress and talk and think (or not think) alike, like paper dolls.I do not wish to be a paper doll.Surely you can see that I am stronger than that.I don't give a fig for the scandalbroth or the gossipmongers. Let us remove to Paris, where no one knows us to care and where they dine on scandal with eclairs every morning.You will say again that it is impossible but I refuse to believe it. I know with every touch of your hand on mine, with every stolen kiss, that nothing is impossible.Perhaps love isn't meant to be simple. Perhaps this is merely a test, such as Psyche went through to prove herself to Cupid. Would you have me count lentils, beloved?And as you claim I have the most to lose, I pray you will let me decide for myself what it is I want and need.Which is you.Not silks or lobster soup in crystal bowls or diamonds around my neck.Just you.You say again and again that you love me.Prove it.”

“Her eyes went so wide they nearly bulged. It was probably wrong of me to find that amusing. Or to want to take a photo of Nicholas with his fangs out and wearing a black cape lined with red satin and then hang it over my pillow in a heart-shaped frame.”

“Solange and all her irritating brothers could get themselves killed without me. I deserved to be part of their clandestine plans. I'd earned it. And I was sure they'd need a human touch at some point. And if they asked Hunter to help instead of me, I'd stake every last one of them myself.Mom says jealousy is unattractive.So's a broken nose.I'm just saying.”

“It was a beautiful night, warm and filled with stars and the songs of crickets and frogs. White flowers glowed in the grass. It was a night made for poetry. We should have been kissing. A lot.Instead we were sneaking out of the caves to a blood-soaked clearing where we’d been ambushed not twenty-four hours earlier. Not exactly an ordinary date.”